Beginner's guide to wine making
This guide is meant to help new players make their first bottles of wine. It focuses on wine made for Oenology and does not go into too much detail.
The first things you need to make wine is the Viticulture skill, a Vine Cut a Vineyard and some fish.
The terrain around the vineyard does not matter (grass, mountains, desert - doesn't matter). Vineyards need a lot of attention in order to produce good results, so the best place to grow grapes is near your own camp.
Vine cuts can either be picked up at a University of Worship (costs one Catfish), or from other players. There are several types of vine cuts (see Wine for a list of their attributes).
Growing Vines
To grow wine, you plant a vine cut at a Vineyard. You now want to
- Make grapes grow on the vine (by fertilizing)
- Refill your stock of vine cuts (by taking cuts and watering)
- Make sure the grapes are suitable for winemaking (the sugar and concentration need to match your needs)
While the vine cut is growing, there are several attributes that change over time.
Grapes (fertilizing)
When a vine is fertilized (with a fish), grapes will start growing. A maximum of 99 grapes can grow from a single fertilization. this takes about 4-6 hours. After the vine has grown 99 grapes, the grapes will start to die, unless they are fertilized again, which will restart the cycle (grapes will now grow from 99 to 198, and then start dying).
Whenever you fertilize, the current number of grapes will be
locked The grapes that are already on the vine at this point will not die. As far as we can tell, all kinds of fish give the same results.
In short: Fertilize every 4-6 hours (after pruning is finished - see below)
Life (watering)
As long as a vine's life is above zero, you can take a vine cut from the vineyard every 6 hours, without harming the vine. When the vine is planted, life is 120. Over the next ~18 hours, life will drop to 27, and then rise again to 93. If you water the vine at this point, life will start dropping to 21, and then rise to 72 (again over 18 hours). If you do not water the vine, life will start dropping,
but will not rise again.
In other words: When you water a vine, the life will start dropping and rise again until it reaches a level slightly below the starting point. Aqba made
a graph showing this.
In short: Water every ~18 hours, and take a vine cutting every 6 hours.
Concentration (pruning)
The concentration in grapes has no known effect on the outcome of the wine (other than being a requirement for wines made for
Test Of The Banquet).
Concentration is achieved through pruning. Pruning a vine kills half the grapes on it, so it is better to reach the desired concentration before growing grapes on a vine. Similar to the way grapes are grown, pruning triggers a "concentration cycle". The concentration will rise by 50 over the next 12 hours, and then fall again, unless the vine is pruned again, which restarts the cycle.
In short: Prune every 12 hours if you need concentration, .
Sugar
Unlike the attributes described above, the sugar content in a vine can not be immediately seen on a vineyard.
Sugar directly limits the amount of alcohol you can get in wine. One sugar converts to one alcohol in the barrel. From the second the vine is planted and until it is harvested, it will generate one sugar per day (some vines generate more - see below). You have to keep track of how long the vine has been growing yourself. A good way to track this is with chat timestamps (
/ts).
As a general rule of thumb, 12 sugar is fine for most purposes - less in some cases.
Fermenting Wine
When you have harvested your grapes, it is time to turn them into wine. This is done in a
Wine Barrel.
It takes 50 grapes to make one bottle of wine. After the grapes have been added to the barrel, and crushed, the barrel should be sealed. At this point you can no longer do anything to change the wine. You can, however,
siphon a taste of wine to track the development. This will give you some detailed numbers, described below.
Sugar
This is the amount of sugar that is (was) in your grapes. As the wine gets older, this will convert to alcohol. Other than that, it has no effect on the wine, but is required for some wines for
Test Of The Banquet.
Alcohol
Probably the most important attribute of a wine is the alcohol percentage. As mentioned above, sugar is needed in order to make alcohol. Exactly one sugar per percent alcohol. When the barrel is sealed, the sugar-to-alcohol conversion starts. It takes about two hours to make the first percent, but as the alcohol percentage grows, this process slows down. It may take days or even weeks to reach your desired percentage (see
Wine for details). If you are making wine to drink for
Oenology points, you need more alcohol, the higher your skill (See
Oenology for details).
Tannin
Tannin has no known effect on the wine, but is required in some wines for
Test Of The Banquet, and needed to make fish, vegetal or mineral
Spirits. Not all types of vine cuts can produce tannin - and amongst those that can, some are faster than others. See
Wine for details. The current fastest known vines produce tannin at a rate of one per 2.5 days.
Fruity
This attribute has no known effect or use.
Fragrant
This attribute has no known effect or use.
Vegetal
This attribute has no known effect or use.
Sour
This attribute has no known effect or use, but is somehow linked to tannin production.
Drinking
When the wine has reached the alcohol (and possibly tannin) you require, it is time to bottle the wine. When you
begin bottling the wine, fermentation stops, and nothing further happens to the wine. For each bottle of wine you need a
Glass Jar, which you get back after you drink the wine.
In order to get the most out of your hard-earned bottles, you should drink it at a Ceremonial Tasting Table, preferably one equipped with some good wine glasses. The table allows up to 7 people to share a bottle of wine - and the glasses will improve the oenology points you get from drinking.
Flavor
So you made your first wine - now you want more. If you make another wine from the same grapes, it will taste exactly the same as your first one. How flavor works is not fully known yet, but we know that it is dependant on 2 things (and, it seems, only those 2 things): Where the grapes were grown, and their vintage. The vintage is the time when the grapes were harvested.
So, in order to make new flavors, you can grow grapes at a different location. Or wait until next vintage. Or you can trade grapes with other players, and use those. Even better, mix your own grapes with some grown at other locations - at different ratios. This way you can achieve several different flavors from a small selection of grapes (see Mixing for details).
Final words
There is a lot more to be said about wine. Most of it can be found at the
Wine page. Aspiring wine makers may want to join the
Egyptian Viticultural Association.